Mithi Mukherjee’s book examines the history of the
empire’s lingering presence in and the colonial history of South Asia
through the lens of laws and legal institutions, modes, and discourses.
Mukherjee argues persuasively for the need to ground our understanding
of postcolonial political formations in India in the colonial history of
political discourses. She extends Michel Foucault’s analysis to the
political domain and deploys the categories of discourse and teleology
(explained as goal-specific discourse) to remind readers that polity and
political processes in India should not be simply understood as if they
had no history and as if they originated sui generis. Instead, she
maintains, this polity has a political and cultural genealogy, and is a
product of discourses and conflicts of the colonial past.